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Game Commission to decide on hunting pheasants in recovery areas

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A hen, like the one seen here, typically lays 10 to 12 eggs, and five or six chicks survive the winter, so the number of pheasants goes up.

SPECIAL TO THE STANDARD-SPEAKER
Pheasants trapped in the American West and released to recovery areas in Pennsylvania are staying on islands of native grasses, but are seldom seen in between, a new report by the Game Commission said.

Pheasants trapped in the American West and released to recovery areas in Pennsylvania are staying on islands of native grasses, but seldom seen in between, a new report by the Game Commission said.

The annual report on the ring-neck pheasant restoration program said the birds are clustered within pockets of the Wild Pheasant Recovery Areas.

"They're staying in the good habitat. In winter, they group up on one farm in big switchback grass. In the spring, they move out a bit," Colleen DeLong, a wildlife biologist who studies pheasants for the commission, said.

Pheasants only range a mile or two from their wintering grounds so they're spreading slowly through the recovery areas such as Central Susquehanna that covers nearly 100,000 acres in parts of Columbia, Montour and Northampton counties.

"One of the big things we've learned after six to seven years is, maybe, they need a lot more time to fill in," DeLong said.

The report recommends that biologists continue to study the transplanted pheasants while hunting remains prohibited in the Central Susquehanna recovery area this year.

Members of the commission will make the final decision on hunting for this year in the recovery areas, and could vote on the question at a meeting scheduled for today in Harrisburg.

Last year, the board discontinued the Wild Pheasant Recovery Area in Pike Run because the population only reached one bird per square mile. The board reopened the land for hunting.

In the Central Susquehanna area, the birds have done better since trappers imported pheasants from South Dakota in 2007 and Montana in 2007, 2008 and 2009. In another recovery area in Somerset County, birds from South Dakota and Montana were set loose in 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Originally, the commission planned to release wild birds for three years into the recovery areas and observe how the populations fared for three years before re-establishing hunting.

In two other recovery areas - the Hegins Gratz area in Schuylkill and Dauphin counties and an area in Franklin County - Western birds haven't been available the last two years.

Snow hasn't been deep enough to cover natural food so the wild pheasants aren't lured into traps by bait.

Western states, too, are growing reluctant to transfer pheasants to Pennsylvania as habitat declines for pheasants, which are native to Asia but have been prized game birds in the United States for decades.

Western developers pave and build on fields where pheasants live, and funding is shrinking for a federal program that pays farmers to plant grasses for pheasants in the West.

In Pennsylvania, some of the farms that support clusters of pheasants have withdrawn from the U.S. Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program.

"Where do those birds go if there is not habitat around them?" DeLong said.

Pheasants Forever and other conservation groups work with farmers and the commission to provide habitat between farms in the program.

Meanwhile, volunteers, farmers and other landowners work with the commission to take surveys of the pheasants.

Each winter, they tromp through fields with dogs to flush out the birds.

Last year, they found as many as 18 hens per square mile in the Washingtonville West sector of the Central Susquehanna and as few as three hens per square mile in Washingtonville South.

The goal for a thriving population is 10 hens per square mile.

Somerset approached the goal with nine hens per square mile in the north sector and eight hens in the south. In Hegins, the flushers found seven birds per square mile, but the Gratz sections had four birds per square mile in the south and one bird per square mile in the north.

In the spring, the researchers and their helpers drive routes where they stop, get out of their vehicles and listen for three or four minutes for the crowing of male pheasants.

They note the number of birds they hear crowing. Using information about how frequently males crow and the chance of hearing a crow issued within a half-mile radius (it's about 28 percent) the researchers calculate the actual number of males along the route.

Using the male-female ratio that they found during the flushing survey, they can calculate the number of hens along the routes, too.

Researchers also track birds by radio collars and set up trail cameras.

As with trapping efforts in the West when the snow wasn't deep, pheasants in Pennsylvania didn't swoop to the corn placed near cameras unless deep snow covered their natural food.

Trail cameras placed for 116 days last winter in the Turbotville section of the Central Susquehanna photographed 20 pheasants, 12 of them hens.

Because a male can fertilize several females, a larger ratio of hens to males is a sign of a healthy population.

Pheasants of either sex, however, rarely live more than two years.

A survey of pheasants with radio collars in Turbotville found a survival rate of 28 percent in 2008.

Of 42 hens that wore the collars on Feb. 8, 2008, only 13 remained alive by July 6, 2008.

"In the West, 30 percent of the hens survive yearly. That means 70 percent of them die. I was blown away by that," DeLong said.

A hen typically lays 10 to 12 eggs, and five or six chicks survive the winter, so the number of pheasants goes up.

"If a hen takes five chicks into the next year, she replaced herself and the father and added three to the population," DeLong said.

kjackson@standardspeaker.com

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